Family Man

Family Man (2013) Heidi Cullinan and Marie Sexton

Vince is struggling with the fact that he still isn’t properly settled down.

It was finding out kids born the year he graduated high school were now legal to drink.

And he’s beginning to wonder if maybe it’s because he’s queer.

Trey works two jobs while going to school part time, because that’s all he can manage.

If there’s one certainty about living with an alcoholic, it’s that nothing is ever certain. Nothing, that is, except the next relapse.

That is what keeps drawing me back to this story. Trey struggling to deal with his mother.

“Why the hell won’t you hear that you should have had help?” Vince all but roared at him. “Is it gonna break you in half or something if you admit you got a fucked-up deal, that you had to grow up too soon, that when someone should have been taking care of you, you were taking care of them instead?”

Trey didn’t answer, but his nostrils flared, and his pale-blue eyes filled with angry tears. Too late Vince realized that yes, admitting it would break Trey in half.

Because Trey’s feelings about his mother are complicated and neither he nor Vince know how to deal with them.

I had a sudden urge to grab them. To tear them to shreds. To rip them apart, just to feel the power of my anger, to give it a way to break free. I could throw them to the floor. Stomp on them. Crush them out of existence. Cry and scream like a petulant child while I turned them to dust.

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Rating: 8/10

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